I hope you enjoy the article Laughter Is Serious Business.  You’ll get happy and a little wiser at the same time!

Read the rest of this blog entry on MamaNeedsABookContract.com

Young@Heart is the name of a chorus started in 1982 in Northampton, Massachusetts, led by Bob Cilman, at least 30 years their junior. The chorus members’ average age is 80. Men and women, black and white, the troupe members have one vital thing in common: a zest for life that propels them to want to learn songs such as Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia,” even though the songs inscribed in their hearts are more likely to be from “The King and I” or “The Sound of Music.” The movie documents their preparation over seven weeks for a new show, and we see them struggle to get the words and rhythm of James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and Coldplay’s “Fix You, “ among others, a challenge they gamely meet, even when one chorus member needs gigantic magnifying glasses to see the words.

This movie reminds us of how vital it is for everyone to keep a sense of purpose, and willingness to learn new things even after heart attacks, cancer, and other ravages of aging have taken their toll. This group loves to sing, and their work in the chorus keeps them living to the fullest. As one of the funniest members of the group, Fred, quips, “We sang on every continent until I became incontinent.” Another man in the group, asked how low he can sing, zings back, “Depends on loose my shorts are.”

The movie is poignant: not all the members of the chorus will make it to the final show, where 92-year old Eileen Hall, cane in hand, sings a moving rendition of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?,” bringing the house down with thunderous applause.  These folks aren’t afraid of death: they are afraid of being dead while still living, which would be their fate if they gave into the dullness and inactivity that their years could invite. These old rockers will have none of it. As one of the prison guards notes after they finish singing Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” at the Hampshire Jail, “Lotta spirit in these folks.”

Check out the movie trailer here. If you’re not smiling and singing by the end of it, well then, you really need to see the movie! 

No, Sendler is survived not only by that daughter and granddaughter, but also by the 2,500 children she saved, and the unknowable number of children and grandchildren they brought to life. These souls, too, must be credited to Irena Sendler. This woman lived according to the philosophy her father taught her, that “people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don’t matter.”

Rest in peace, Irena Sendler. And thank you for your bravery. 

Happy IVGLDSW Day! Today is International Very Good Looking, Darn Smart Woman’s Day , so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it from a Very Good Looking, Darn Smart Woman!  Remember this motto to
live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractiv e and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally wo rn out and screaming ‘WOO HOO what a ride!’

To the Girls !!

Inside every older person is a younger person—wondering what the heck happened. - Cora Harvey Armstrong

Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out. But I can usually shut her up with cookies. (Unknown)

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.  --Helen Hayes (at 73)

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows.  --Janette Barber

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first one being—hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint. —Erma Bombeck

Old age ain’t no place for sissies.  --Bette Davis

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.—Caryn Leschen

If you can’t be a good example—then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning. (Unknown)

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. --Eleanor Roosevelt

Three deaths among the universe of bloggers does not a trend make, but the incredible pressure to continually spit out new news and commentary in a news cycle that never sleeps is clearly a recipe for stress, inactivity, and yeah, health risks.

The article quotes blogger Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of the technology blog TechCrunch as saying, “I haven’t died yet.” The article continues: “The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,” he said.

I’ve long wondered about the cost to bloggers of driving themselves so hard to keep up with the endles demands of the digital world, and also felt saddened by how much more the entire concept of news and commentary has been cheapened by the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there. True, many are fantastic, and, while this contradicts what I just said, I’m also glad the blogosphere has finally given well needed competition to the mainstream media, who can no longer afford to avoid politically inconvenient news stories.

But everything has a cost, so I hope that the bloggers working an endless workweek will take a break, hire an assistant, and get out there and get some fresh air. Who knows? The sunshine might help give them new ideas about what to blog about when they hit their computer desks again. 

Here are excerpts from Weiner’s February 9 column:

“All of this cogitating about contentment (from social scientists) has revealed much about who’s supposedly happy and who isn’t, (but) no single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than Democrats. A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as ‘very happy,’ compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents). This is a sizable gap and a remarkably consistent one, too. . . .

“Is there something about being a card-carrying member of the GOP that induces a warm, fuzzy feeling, a sort of political Prozac? Or does the river of causality flow in the other direction: Are happy people more likely to become Republicans than Democrats? . . . (Even) poor Republicans are, on average, happier than poor Democrats, and wealthy Republicans are happier than wealthy Democrats. . .

“Basically, Republicans have in spades all the things that combine to make us happy. Church attendance is particularly crucial. People who attend religious services regularly are more likely to report being ‘very happy’ than those who don’t—43 percent vs. 26 percent (a happiness boost, by the way, that cuts across all the major religious denominations). In addition, Republicans are more likely to be married than Democrats, and married people are happier than singles.

“When I tell my liberal friends about Republican happiness, they usually reply angrily—angry not being a happy trait. ‘They’re just not paying attention,’ one friend snapped. ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ said another.  . . . Democrats are, on average, better educated (than Republicans) and that might explain their glumness. People with advanced degrees report being less happy than those with only a bachelor’s. . .

“There is something to be said for the under-examined life. . . Happy people remember events more rosily than they actually happened, while the morose remember the past accurately. If this isn’t depressing enough for liberals . . . once in power, Democrats tend to focus on issues that, according to the science of happiness, have little effect on our contentment—income equality, for instance, and racial diversity. Neither is linked to greater happiness. Countries with large disparities between rich and poor are no less happy than more egalitarian ones, studies have found. And the happiest countries in the world tend to be homogenous ones, such as Denmark and Iceland, not the ethnic melting pots that liberals celebrate.

“. . . For us, happiness is not a blessing but an expectation. And we expect it from our politicians. The more optimistic candidate won nine of the 10 elections from 1948 to 1984, according to Martin Seligman, the pooh-bah of the positive-psychology movement. This may explain why Republicans have dominated presidential elections in the past 40 or so years. They, of course, have as their happy standard-bearer Ronald Reagan, who smilingly urged us to ask ourselves if we were better off (read: happier) than we’d been four years earlier. . . . (Among Democrats) only Bill Clinton, with his ‘bridge to the 21st century’ and his ‘Third Way’ (part Democratic technocrat, part Republican mirth), managed to break through the happiness barrier. . .

“. . .  Perhaps optimistic candidates are elected because they’re able to weather setbacks during the grueling primary season. But there is also, of course, something about an optimistic candidate that voters find irresistible. Psychologists have found that we tend to like more positive people—no surprise there—so that might explain why we vote for the more optimistic candidate.

“. . . There is, though, an exception to the Happy Republicans trend. More Democrats than Republicans say they’re excited about the current election, and Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the election season leaves them frustrated and bored. Might Democrats be on the verge of transforming themselves into the party of happiness? If so, that would be the ultimate flip-flop.”

Kim Burton, a 27-year-old electrical engineer who grew up on Hydrox, created the web site about seven years ago. On the visitor page, Hydrox fans mourn their loss together, as well as share their victories in discovering suitable replacements that don’t taste like (bleh!) Oreos.  “This is a dark time in cookie history,” wrote Gary Nadeau on the web site. “And for those of you who say, ‘Get over it, it’s only a cookie,’ you have not lived until you have tasted a Hydrox.” “As a deep down Hydroxian its passing will be mourned forever,” added Michael from Queen Creek, Arizona. “There will be an imbalance in my system without certain levels existing within me. ALL HAIL HYDROX!!!!!!!!!!”

But some find hope on the horizon. Craig in Southern California wrote, “ALL YE HYDROX FAITHFUL, REJOICE ! ! ! I swear that Famous Amos CHOCOLATE Sandwich Cookies are Hydrox in disguise ! ! ! I found mine in a Super A’s market and my sister found them in a WalMart near Austin, Texas. . .  The Famous Amos version IS Hydrox: size, weight, crispness of the cookies, texture of the filling, the aroma, and most important: THE TASTE ! ! !”

Other sightings (and, more appropriately, tastings) of cookies were also found by Gene from Kansas City. He wrote about a brand called Tuxedos that he found far from home in a Safeway. Thrilled with their closeness to Hydrox, he shipped three cases of Tuxedos to his home in Kansas City to tide him over for the rest of the year. “I am enormously & finally happy now!!!!” Gene wrote.

Web site founder Kim Burton discovered years ago that the cheaper Hydrox actually predated the Oreo, having been launched in 1908 by what would later become Sunshine Biscuits Inc.  Hydrox-less, Burton has pretty much given up on sandwich cookies altogether. “If I want a cookie I just make a batch,” she says. “Chocolate chip are the best.” (I couldn’t agree more.)

Despite the pleas of the Hydrox fan base, Burton doesn’t expect Keebler to resurrect the sandwich cookie. “If it happened, sure, great, I’d buy them and eat them every week forever. But if not, I’ll understand. The web site sends Hydrox people the message that they’re not alone, that it’s okay to tell your friends that Oreos don’t taste like good sandwich cookies, they taste… well… corporate.”

I was never a fan of either Hydrox or Oreos—unless they were crumbled in some ice cream. But I salute the sincere loyalty of so many Americans who won’t easily give up their chocolate sandwich cookies, at least not giving their favorite sweet its due. 

If you have teenagers or kids in college, you need to read this article, and better yet, Dr. Grossman’s important book, which explains how, despite years of “health education,” our kids are woefully and sometimes tragically misinformed or willfully not told about the common aftereffects of what is known simply as “lifestyle choices,” including multiple sexual partners, abortion, and a values-free lifestyle. While our kids are expected to be able to show restraint in the areas of diet and exercise, they supposedly have no control over other areas of their lives, an idea that Dr. Grossman finds untrue and patronizing.

Read the article, and send it to those you know who are in college, or parents of college kids. Our kids deserve better than they are getting at school from the so-called campus health counselors. 

After asking Shalit for names of young women who were following her advice, dressing decidedly un-skank-like and even boycotting some clothing companies for their vulgar marketing campaigns, the producer told Shalit’s publicist that the segment was cancelled. Well, that wasn’t exactly true; they just cancelled Shalit, in favor of other guests who revel in the show-it-all couture styles. None of the teens whom Shalit recommended made the cut. As Shalit wrote in her op-ed, “All the teenage models that I had recommended were nowhere to be seen. The show was instead presented as a war between ‘wild’ young’uns who wanted to look provocative and their ‘out of touch’ parents.”

I admit, I have never read any of Dr. Phil’s books, nor seen an entire program. But in the snippets of his show I have seen, he seemed to me to be a guy who had integrity and got on anyone’s case who refused to take responsibility for their lives. So it was particularly dismaying to see that the nation’s eminent TV psychologist could not bring himself to even reveal the truth about what’s going on in our culture today, which is that teens are increasingly rebelling against their boomer parents’ permissive attitudes by reclaiming their own physical privacy and modesty. As Shalit put it, “By omitting all the younger, more wholesome role models from his show, Dr. Phil unwittingly revealed how much distortion is required to prop up this media-stoked controversy. The dichotomy between prudish elders and wild young’uns turns out to be, on closer examination, largely adult dogma. Yes, many young people are rebelling--but today they rebel, increasingly, by upholding high standards in the face of the low ones promoted around them.”

I highly recommend you read Shalit’s article. And I applaud her ongoing efforts, which include blogging at ModestlyYours.net, where other women ignored by the mainstream media have a voice, one that they know will be heard and respected, even though they are fully clothed.

Yikes! Better think again before calling the divorce lawyer!

Of course, divorce is always sad, and when children are involved, it’s a tragedy. Yet to think that anyone might reconsider a divorce because they are more concerned about the carbon footprints left behind instead of the shattered hearts left behind is ludicrous. On the other hand, I’m glad that this news may help counter the absurd accusation long spouted by some environmentalists that large families (which many people define as having more than three children) somehow hurt the environment, gobbling more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources. The fact is, as this research proves, the more people who can live under one roof are living “geener” than all those one- or two-child families.  In fact, the world population today is in decline overall, yet contains a rising number of individual households. Maybe those who thought of their small families as so environmentally progressive will rethink their positions.

With four children of my own, I’m quite familiar with the December dilemma: how much to buy, and for whom? When my kids were little, I scoured educational catalogs looking for toys or games that were innovative, worthwhile and sturdy. But all too often, what the kids loved best wasn’t the toy or game, but the box it came in, which often morphed into a fort, a house for Legos, or a makeshift hat.

But as much as we love our children’s excitement as they unwrap their gifts, we know the truth: the very best present from a parent to a child doesn’t come in any box, bag or envelope. It needs no wrapping paper.  It shouldn’t need a special occasion, such as Christmas or Chanukah, to be given.  And when it comes to sheer durability, nothing beats it. This is the gift of our loving attention, which our children want and need more than any electronic toy or status-conferring designer clothes. But it’s precisely this kind of exclusive attention that we are often most hard pressed to give.

Today our lives are so fast-paced that there is precious little time to devote one-on-one to our children. During weeks that were frenzied with activity and I paid less attention than I should have to my children, I have bought them a new plaything that I quickly stopped for at the drugstore on the way home. Sure, they loved to get the present when it wasn’t even anyone’s birthday, but I knew it was a kind of a bribe: you sit and play with this so I can finish my work.

If these “kiddie kickbacks” are rare occurances, no one will be much the worse for wear. But as busy as parents are, we need to carve out time for our biggest project of all: our kids. We need to be there for them when they are small, to read to them and play with them, and we need to be there when they are big, to listen to whatever they have to tell us about school, their friends, about the teacher who they graded them unfairly on the test.

It’s true, kids will probably get bored with even the most “exciting” of toys, but they’ll never, ever get tired of a parent’s loving attention.  So with December now upon us, and we budget for our holiday gift buying for our kids, let’s also budget for the most precious gift of all: time for them.

Another key to happiness is discovering what your personal unique contribution is in this world. Once you discover what your strengths and personal dreams are in making a contribution to God’s world, you automatically stop looking at what the neighbors are doing, and the pressures of “keeping up with the Jones’” materially or spiritually is obviated. You need to be creative with your creativity. You cannot stultify your creativity or your soul will dry up.

Q: You recommend living in the moment. How does one do that?
A: It doesn’t mean acting on impulse; it means living consciously so you don’t miss the message that God is showing you in this moment. We need to stop and smell the coffee, so to speak, and do so while we have the opportunity. The famous rabbi, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, visited the Swiss Alps when he was 90 years old. He didn’t want to meet God and be asked, “Why didn’t you go see my Alps?” Also, try to find meaningful spiritual connections each day: laughing with your spouse or children, cherishing the feeling of singing a song. Breathe in the Creation! This day was made for you!

Q: How do you dig out from under when times are hard?
A: First, look for things that are going right. Use your free will to choose the right reaction to various events. Try to train yourself to worry less, to react less dramatically to situations. Nobody can “make” you angry, happy, etc. You choose your own reactions to situations. However, we are all tested by God at various times, and we all spend some time walking through the desert, metaphorically speaking. This is our time for introspection and to bring us greater self-actualization. If we are not proactive enough in finding our purpose, we may end up in that desert for a while. But again, this personal growth ultimately leads to happiness.

Rabbi Roll can be reached at yisroelhillel@aol.com . See more of his work on the web site, http://www.12steps2selfesteem.org. 

I would think it would be hard for administrators to defend this with a straight face, but they claim (really!) that some kids complained that their feelings were hurt by being tagged “it.” Of course! Name-calling during a chase-game must be the ultimate objectification of children! Naturally, the game must be outlawed!

Fortunately, parents with sense (I hope this is not an endangered minority) were less sure about the wisdom of banning the game. “Tag is an essential part of growing up,” argued one parent. “If you can’t handle being named ‘it,’ in fourth grade, how will you handle having your head dunked in a keg of beer during fraternity rush in college?”

Not surprisingly, the ban on tag in some schools has opened up the possibilities for the eradication of other dangerous games. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time when we hear from the Coalition to Ban Duck-Duck-Goose, who will applaud the bravery of Colorado school administrators for understanding the dangers of competitive games such as tag, which may lower self-esteem and may even cause eating disorders in girls. They will, no doubt, encourage schools everywhere to outlaw other potentially hurtful games, including “Duck-Duck-Goose,” “Red Rover, Red Rover,” “Steal the Bacon,” and “Kick the Can.” Why, come to think of it, even the names of these games are aggressive, teaching violence and theft. And how would Jewish kids feel about a game in which they are forced to steal bacon?  Therapists, man your stations! 

Well, now that we’ve got tag out of the way, can we let the learning begin? It’s almost time for the sex-ed class for 2nd-graders!